What Is The Bauer Thesis And Why Does It Matter?

What It Is

The Bauer thesis (named after Walter Bauer) is a reconstruction of history that argues that in the first centuries after Jesus’ death there was no such thing as orthodox Christianity, rather there were many diverse christianities. Many different views of Jesus all held equal legitimacy and there was no idea of a canon of authoritative Scripture. From there, as the reconstruction goes, one group (centered in Rome) eventually gained enough power to crush the competition and to define “orthodoxy” according to their own beliefs while labeling everyone who disagreed with them as “heretics”. So in short diversity (what today is called heresy) preceded orthodoxy. The traditional view is that orthodoxy, founded on the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, came first and heresy arose as a perversion of the “faith once for all delivered”.

Why It Matters

The Bauer thesis is important, not because it’s historically factual, but because much of modern scholarship assumes this thesis as the foundational paradigm for interpreting history. In other words, much of scholarship begins with the belief that the Bauer thesis is true and then forces any evidence to fit into that model instead of allowing the evidence to form the model. Inherent to the Bauer thesis is an anti-supernatural and anti-Christian bias. This thesis enters the popular level through media such as The Da Vinci Code, authors such as Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, and through TV specials related to the Bible or “newly discovered” gospel accounts.

If you go to a secular university (and even some “Christian” universities) it is almost assured that the professors teaching any field touching on religion will hold to some variation of the Bauer thesis. This is especially true in classes such as history, literature, and religious studies.  Books such as The Heresy of Orthodoxy are very helpful in introducing and dismantling the dangerous ideas found in the Bauer thesis so that we can be aware of, and better able to defend ourselves from, this attack on Christianity.